Bright Birthday with Erica

Hi everyone! Erica here, it’s my turn back on the blog today. I have so many birthdays that have just passed and even more coming up so I have to replenish my birthday card stash. What a hardship, eh? Perfect excuse to get some pretty flower stamp out in my mind!

I thought it would be nice to mix’n’match the flowers from the Thank You So Much and Together We Bloom as well as the leaves, to create a nice floral border to frame the Happy birthday sentiment I was planning on using.

To start with I got some water colour card stock and cut out an A2 sized panel using the die in the Darling Ribbon & Dotted Frames creative dies set. This is one of my go-to dies, not just from Studio Katia but generally when I craft, I use it all the time and it became one of my staples very quickly.

I almost always heat emboss my images when I am planning on doing water colouring and todays card was no different, it just had to be planned a bit and masked a bit and done in stages… Before stamping the images with black ink, to create a black outline under clear embossing powder, I used my anti-static tool all over the panel. Then I popped it in my MISTI and put the stamps where I wanted them. The MISTI really comes in handy here as I first had to stamp with black ink and then with VersaMark to make sure I got the images nice and juice to pick up the embossing powder. Once the first lot was set with the heat tool, I used the anti-static tool all over the panel again. The heat and the ‘wind’ from the heat tool removes any of the powder and it’s very important to reapply before attempting to add more embossing powder as it will stick to everything.

The masks I had from previous projects came in handy here and I placed them over my already stamped images and then built up my flower border by filling in the empty spaces with the stamps.

***A top tip*** is to use a piece of clear acetate between your panel and the stamps as they might have residual ink on them and it only takes a tiny amount to cause a smudge!

I repeated the process with the anti-static tool, black ink, VersaMark ink and clear embossing powder until I was happy with the floral border. Then I did exactly the same with the sentiment ‘happy birthday’ which I mixed’n’matched from the Happy stamp set. This is another must-have set, it covers everything from ‘happy holidays’ to ‘happy anniversary’ to ‘happy, just because’. So handy and versatile!

Once all my flowers and my sentiment was stamped and heat embossed, I got my Zig markers out and sat down to colour. My colouring time is my me-time, I just adore it and quite often sit down to colour rather than watch TV for instance. I find it so relaxing and love seeing the stamped images come to life. Colouring flowers I especially adore and for this one I actually only used the Dark Pink Zig marker for all the flowers, to create highlights and lowlights I added either more water or more colour and that was it. It is a time-consuming work but so rewarding. The leaves were, perhaps unsurprisingly, coloured green and I also added some Warm Grey in between the stems at the bottom and very lightly around the top of the flowers. I do this often to soften the look a bit and to tone down the white space a little.

There is a fine line between colouring it just right and going to far, I especially find this applies when I have stared at the same image for some time. This is one of the reasons I like using soft colours to do the shading and I have to force myself to take breaks, walk away a little and look at it with fresh eyes once I come back to it. Quite often you will find that the colouring looks quite different once it is all dry too. Building up layers is a great skill to have when it comes to water colouring but it can be hard to stick to. Quite often I just want to keep colouring until it is completely finished. I’m not always the most patient of people, it’s one of my flaws…

Whilst letting the panel dry, I cut a piece of card stock and made a card base. I also selected a few satin finish black sequins from the Jet Black fusion pack, I adhered these to the panel with glossy accents once the panel was bone dry. A quick adhesive job later the whole thing was added to the card base and that was that! Whilst this wasn’t exactly a quick card, I really enjoyed making it and hopefully the recipient will enjoy it too!